As part of our text book adoption in Science this year we are looking into some of the kits that are available.  I am using one right now in my classroom that is all about Fabric.  To be honest, at first I didn’t think my kiddos would be so excited about fabric–but the LOVE it with a capital L!

The first day we checked out the fabrics and compared them to each other.  We also made a list after feeling each one that helped us to write down some of the “touch” words (rough, smooth, silky, bumpy, etc.).  Then, I taught the children the “Feely Box Game”.  There are 9 or 10 different fabric sample squares.  I put one set of the 9 or 10 on the table and the other set into a feely box (a box that you can’t see into and has one opening for the children to put their hand into).  The idea is that the children use their sense of touch to figure out which fabrics match.  They pick up one from outside the box and try to find the match from inside the box, using only their sense of touch.

The next activity we did was to hunt for fabrics.  When the children were at recess, I hid swatches of fabric around the room.  I laid matching swatches on the childrens’ tables.  They had to find a swatch that exactly matched theirs and then return to their seats.  All of the swatches are blue so it was difficult to find 23 hiding places for the swatches, but as it ended up, some were hidden so well, we didn’t find them for an hour after the hunt was over.

Comparing swatches to see if they match

We also created fabric collages.  The children could choose from a variety of different fabrics and were free to cut them any way they wanted to.

This one of the collages that the children created.

Another activity we completed was to learn about how fabric is held together.  We learned about the woof and the weave of fabric and then the children got to pull strings from either side of the fabric.  They had TONS of fun unraveling fabric for the purpose of science! 🙂

The children glued what was left of their square of fabric into their science journal and then wrote about their thoughts on how fabric is woven together.

Kristen 🙂